How do you get better at your craft—whether it’s surfing, playing football, or hosting a radio show?
While all these disciplines are obviously very different from one another, the correct response is this:
Watch “game film.”
It is only by studying your own performance that you can assess what’s working…or not? But the question that needs to be asked of every practitioner is whether an expert and/or coach can enhance the process. And how can the surfer, the quarterback, or the midday host can best analyze their own performance and realize the optimal changes that need to be made?
These are the questions that struck me when I read a recent ESPN.com story by Courtney Cronin, “Why film study is key for Bears QB Caleb Williams.” Even if you’re not a football P1, this is an easy story to relate to because it revolves around the discipline of performance evaluation.
In just a couple months, Williams will start his second season as on-field leader of the struggling Chicago Bears NFL franchise. Williams was the #1 pick in the draft in 2024, and had his ups and downs—mostly the latter—in a challenging rookie year.
Now, the Bears have a new coach, several highly regarded new draft picks this year, and rising optimism about Williams’ potential to improve in his sophomore season. One of the revelations in the ESPN article was that apparently, none of the Bears coaches helped then-rookie Williams learn how to study game film.
In other words, he wasn’t airchecked, the term we use in radio for the evaluation of on-air work. Here’s how it played out on Facebook as Williams attempted to walk back some of his comments:
Williams is not alone. In fact, our AQ studies of on-air talent I have presented the last several years at Morning Show Boot Camp reveal nearly half the hosts in our large sample made up of commercial radio hosts in the U.S. say they’re never airchecked. Combine that with those who sit down with a programming boss just a couple times a year and we learn that nearly seven in ten are largely ignored.
Appalling, shocking, disappointing. We’ve conducted six of these air personality studies since 2018 and these numbers barely budge. Too many radio broadcasting companies are not providing the necessary training and coaching talent needs to grow, develop, and increase their value to the organization, and to advertisers, donors, and of course, audiences.
So, how can radio talent remain competitive when many are left to their own devices, creativity, and initiative to improve their games?
Caleb Williams explains how he needed to learn the ropes of football’s version of airchecking: “It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to watch film. It was more or less the sense of learning shortcuts…learning ways to watch film and be more efficient. Learning ways to pick things up better.”
Hopefully, Williams will receive the coaching he and Bears fans deserve. He might want to consider dipping into his salary to invest in coaching of his own. That’s what Yankees phenom, Aaron Judge, has done, hiring a hitting guru—Richard Schenck—known in the trades as “Teacherman.” Here’s how he approaches the craft of teaching hitting:
But if you’re on the air in radio at the moment, chances are your compensation isn’t in Judge’s league. Paying for personal coaching just may not be in the budget. And is there a “Teacherman” in radio?
To cover my bases, I assembled a handful of some of the best coaches working in and around radio. In other words, what are the “hacks”—the tricks pros use to slog their way through hours of film—or tape—in order to come away with the best takeaways they can use to improve their performance.
To best use this football analogy for radio, I assembled some of the very best “coaches” in the industry to give us their tips, shortcuts, and hacks. Here’s how they broke it down for JacoBLOG:
Tracy Johnson, Tracy Johnson Media Group
Have a plan going into each air check, whether it’s with a PD, as a show, or by yourself. Objectively analyze one specific thing you want to improve. Just one. Maybe it’s teasing, more colorful storytelling, or a stronger hook. Then focus exclusively on that goal and be relentless.
Celebrate great moments. Tweak good ones. Analyze “meh” execution and brainstorm how it could have been fixed. And figure out what went wrong on the disasters.
This approach gets everyone working together with a productive, creative approach and a defined goal. It won’t feel like a beatdown
Randy Lane/Jeff McHugh, The Randy Lane Company
We keep talent coaching simple:
- Start with what’s working.
- Then move to what needs work.
- Aim for 3 positives and 3 areas for improvement.
Talent could start with this self-evaluation and partner with a colleague to do the same exercise.
Before giving feedback, we first ask the talent:
What are you doing well? What needs work?
Most start with the negatives. But knowing your strengths—and building on them—is what truly drives growth.
My coaching partner, Jeff McHugh, also teaches public speaking with Own the Room. One of his best exercises:
- Pair two execs.
- Have each give a 30-second, memorable self-introduction.
- Exchange feedback: 1 thing they liked, 1 thing to improve.
Radio talent can do this too:
- Partner with another staffer or industry friend.
- Evaluate a story, feature, or segment.
- Share 1 positive and 1 improvement idea.
Key Areas to Focus Your Evaluation
1. Content — Is it relevant, sticky, emotionally engaging, memorable?
2. Execution — Are the setups and exits tight? Does the segment flow?
3. Character — What tone/emotion is coming through? Are you authentic, fun, likable, edgy, or trustworthy?
Angela Perelli, Angela Perelli Coaching
Some PDs aren’t very good at airchecking, so when they do meet, talent leave feeling worse or like “that was a waste of time.” My suggestion? Listen back to yourself on your own, every week, specifically for:
- station formatics
- a conversational delivery that talks to, not at, the audience
- engaging, outward-focused setups
- avoiding wordiness, too many details, loss of momentum mid-break
- strong payoffs
Or do a trade with a friend. Listen to each other. Point out what you liked and then offer 1-2 suggestions.
Steve Reynolds, The Reynolds Group 
I find, very often when starting with a show, there doesn’t seem to be any guiding goal of listening to an aircheck. What are we to listen for and evaluate it against to see if it had benefit to the show’s images and matched audience expectations? Short of knowing this, it’s easy for talent to default to hearing that the break was too long or meandered without a game plan and little else. And who wants to always just hear that?
So, let’s talk about what we’re looking for! Great airchecks meet strategic and structural goals. Strategic is all about the content: Was the content relevant to the audience’s life? Was it a timely topic about something going on today? Was the talent honest in their reaction or commentary? Did the talent share their lives to forge a connection with the audience, thus defining their characters? Was it local? Was the content story-based? Did the content have a payoff or destination so it was more than chatter, helping the break accrue an image of being innovative (even if on a basic level) so the content became unique? Did the break make the listener feel anything? Primarily humor, but memorable content breaks elicit an emotion by those consuming them.
There are the Three P’s of a content break: Promotion (we’re selling something—ourselves, a giveaway, another time to listen, our socials, etc.). Process (how to do something—how to play a game or get involved in a giveaway). And Protein (this is the content and the most important way we’ll win because the audience comes for content). You don’t need to tick all of the boxes above (and you do need to minimize the process and promotion parts of breaks). But you must get a green checkmark on many of them.
Structural is the area most people focus on. I believe being strategic is more important. But great breaks structurally are accomplished by the prep and in execution: was the topic and its drama established quickly (first 15 seconds) to hook the listener to want to hear what follows by providing context? Is the topic familiar so it doesn’t require explanation for why it was chosen? Was the middle portion—this is where the content comes alive—efficient? Or did the break lack focus, therefore lasting too long (this is where many shows get in trouble)? Finally, was everyone prepped enough to help the anchor steer the content in the direction of its payoff or destination?
Once you set these specific questions in place, it’s easier to be objective in your evaluation of any break.
An important hack I employ all the time is to shock the room by almost always choosing a break to review where the above is accomplished. By reinforcing the show’s content strategy and execution, and helping the performers hear it, two things generally happen: I connect the dots back to better content breaks and get even more of it next time. I also create trust, which allows me to occasionally pull a break that was off-point or missed the mark and they generally hear that, too.
Mike Stern, Jacobs Media
I’ll give you two “hacks” or “best practices” or whatever you want to call them—one for morning hosts and one for music daypart hosts.
With morning teams, often the toughest thing to agree on is the quality of content a show is selecting. I developed this four-quadrant chart to serve as a grading system everyone can agree on. It challenges everyone involved to rate each topic on two major factors: is the content relatable to the target audience; and is it entertaining? The more relatable the further to the right, the content should be placed on the chart. The more entertaining, the higher up.
The idea is to do well in both measures but, as we often hear, it’s easy to settle for entertaining content that isn’t specifically relatable like Florida Man stories or talk about local stories like road closures which aren’t necessarily entertaining. And some stories, like congressional testimony, might be neither.
Being able to plot out the show’s content gives everyone involved a good sense of what listeners are hearing when they tune in and helps set goals for content selection going forward.
For hosts outside of morning drive one of the biggest challenges is repetition. Management often expects hosts to talk about the big station promotion or contest multiple times a day—5, 6, or even 7 days a week.
What I suggest is that hosts take the time to brainstorm 3-5 ways they personally relate to the promotion. This can be done alone, with the Program Director or with a friend or significant other. Even when it’s something as simple as a cash giveaway, taking the time to write down several creative ideas about how you personally relate to the prize will help turn even the most mundane station business into relatable, interesting content instead of the same wallpaper over and over.
With everyone having limited time, doing the work ahead of time to produce the ideas means you are always ready regardless of your situation in the studio. While three to five ideas may not seem like a lot, between recycling the concepts from one day to another and finding ways to tweak them slightly, you will have a treasure trove of content to lean on when faced with the same liner card for the hundredth time.
Join me for a unique panel at Morning Show Boot Camp in Austin this August. I’ll compile highlights from the first six AQ studies and discuss the results with an all-star panel. We’ll also be polling the Boot Camp audience with live polling from TextGroove. Info/registration is here. – FJ
Originally published by Jacobs Media
